Saturday, 22 March 2014

So, geekrant has been quiet for the last week, “oh no!” I don’t
hear you cry, “How have we coped without your opinionated, patronising view
upon all things geek”.

Well I’m glad you were concerned, (although I know you really
weren’t), over lack of postings. The truth is work has been hard and carrying
on a relationship with a 4000 mile distance and a 6 hour time difference is not
as flexible as well, any relationship that you have in the same time zone as
the other person. But my wonderful fiancé makes it all worthwhile, all the
time.

Anyway, Saturday was the birthday of William Shatner, for many
the ultimate geek deity. The guy who was captaining the Enterprise while Picard
still had hair and before Riker could even grow a beard, the ultimate example
of a celebrity not taking themselves seriously in the slightest by appearing to
take themselves far too seriously.

He’s also the guy who defies any rules on what should and
shouldn’t work on T.V. 1980s crime series “T.J. Hooker” is a perfect example.
On paper, this is a series that shouldn’t work, at all. Older actor
(desperately fighting against the advances of middle aged spread, I know who am
I to make comments about other people’s weight?) plays middle aged plain
clothes detective who returns to uniform to teach younger officers how to fight
crime. It shouldn’t work! But then you’re forgetting its Shatner, who manages
to make it look like some kind of high intensity work-out to fight said middle
aged spread combined with an acting class to show just how much of an expert he
is at T.V. acting. And despite the fact that series was never phenomenally
scripted, Canada’s greatest export since maple syrup and ice hockey still kept
it going for 5 seasons. Just watch the intro sequence to see why it shouldn’t
work but really does!

William Shatner is one of those unusual actors in geek circles,
a man so identified with his iconic character that he can do pretty much
anything, even tell Trekkies to “get a life” on an early 80s episode of
Saturday Night Live. He’s almost given a free pass. Because HE IS JAMES
TIBERIUS KIRK. Chris Pine might play Kirk in the new “Star Trek” movies but
Shatner IS Kirk!

If the planet Earth was invaded by monster aliens next week, I
wouldn’t send out the Army to fight them or stand like an idiot under their
destruction beam with a cardboard sign saying “take me with you” or even fly a
jet upwards into said destruction beam while saying “hi boys, I’m back”. No, I’d
send Shatner, he’d know what to do. If nothing else he’d make them laugh so
much with his jokes that they’d simply give up on eradicating the human race
and watch some “Star Trek” while noting that Shatner’s version of “Common People”
is as good as anyone can get with a “Pulp” cover version if they don’t come
from Sheffield.

So, Shatner gets a free pass in the geek world, why? Because he
behaves like he doesn’t deserve it. He knows the severe limitations in the
original “Star Trek”. Its effects and scripting and that it’s amazing it’s
lasted as long as it has. He knows that his performance by the necessity of the
time is slightly melodramatic and that every “Star Trek” Captain has been more believable
and realistic, because 1990s and 2000s audiences needed that. But he is James T
Kirk and in the heart of every geek, at least every male one, we want to be
James T. Kirk.

Saturday, 15 March 2014

The 80s saw many
things, Reagan and Thatcher, Bush and Thatcher and Cagney and Lacey. The Berlin
Wall came down. Mobile phones appeared. So did personal computers. Two sets of Summer Olympics boycotted over Cold War antagonism. It saw
the growth of a culture exemplified by Wall Street. Braces (that’s “suspenders” to the Americans),
shirts with worrying stripes and a culture dedicated wholly to the pursuit of
money. Many have said that this could be
seen as a rebellion against the Sixties inspired “flower power” attitudes. It
might have been. But it was also a time fertile for the breeding of geeks.

For many of my generation
the 1980s was a kind of geek nirvana. The time when our passion was born and
kindled, it had movies that took children on a voyage of discovery and did it
with humour. It had television series that easily became cult t.v. . Honestly
which male 80s child didn’t want to grow up to drive “KITT” from “Knight Rider”,
we all knew we’d do a better job than “the Hoff” did. “The Goonies” made us
believe that anyone of us could go off with our friends, find buried treasure
and all the while outwit clumsy adults.
Even science fiction saw a new prominence with the return of a “Star
Trek” series.

Maybe that is why
Hollywood is remaking so many of these great movies and tv series. And maybe that’s why so many people get
dismayed or angry or even hurt when we see the things we love get remade into
things we never imagined.

I love “The A-Team” , for example. I have most
of the series on dvd. I know the names of the characters, the actors, the ranks
of the characters ( Lieutenant Colonel, Captain, Lieutenant, Sergeant). I know
that veteran character actor Alan Fudge (who played Patrick Duffy’s boss on “The
Man from Atlantis”) played three different characters on each of the first
three seasons of the series, that Faceman fell in love with the same actress
playing two different characters in successive seasons and that Boy George is
perhaps the worst example of pop star acting since Pat Boone did movies. I excitedly awaited the movie when it came
out. It looked great. Face, BA and
Murdoch were all fantastically realised modernised versions of the original
characters. Then there was Liam Neeson.

Neeson, who it needs
to be said, is a brilliant actor, thoroughly ruins, for me, the whole movie.
Called upon to play the charismatic, attention seeking, brilliant and at times,
slightly unhinged Lieutenant Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith, he instead seems to
be engaging in some attempt at a Western tough guy. At various points I
expected him to say “Get of your horse and drink your milk” or to ask some bad
guy to “Go for your guns”. It ruined the movie for me. How he could totally have misread the
character I could not understand until I read an article about his preparation
for the movie in which he said he’d read the script and felt the character was
a Lee Marvin style of character and that he’d never watched the series. The
other three leads, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson
were all children aged 7, 9 and 4 when the original series came out. Neeson was
an adult of 29. The first three acted their parts brilliantly, because you bet
they’d watched the series in the 80s, but Neeson hadn’t, so he just played the
part from his view of the script not the series.

But that made me
think, maybe that’s the point. Maybe geeks are just children who never let go
of our heroes of childhood. We can’t stand interference with them because of
what they meant to us in our lifetimes.
We dislike the remakes, not because they’re truly bad ( although some
DEFINITELY are, the least said about the recent remake of “Ironside” the
better) but because they shatter our childhood memories, we see the characters
not now as heroes but the fragile human beings they are. The plotline holes and
storyline errors are more obvious because we are older, more aware of the world
around us. We don’t live in that perfect vista of youth anymore, where Saturday
morning cartoons (my favourite, “The Raccoons) encompassed our world and summer
holidays stretched on forever like some fun filled, sunlit ocean.

My friend Neil’s
favourite movie is “The Karate Kid”, the original version, and like myself with
many of the t.v. series and movies that I love, he wasn’t even born when the
original came out in 1984. And yet he loves that movie with an utter passion.
Nothing can come close to that film for him. And I have the utmost respect for
his attitude. He can barely stomach the remake of “Karate Kid” (not really
surprising for a film that really serves as a Jaden Smith stepping stone
vehicle from the brilliance of “Pursuit of Happiness” to the utterly bonkers,
mindbendingly boring “After Earth”) but is that truthfully because of the
problems with the movie (making the protagonist younger, setting it in China
when Mr Miyagi was from Okinawa, Jaden Smith) or is it that it is “Daniel San”
is his childhood hero?

When I visited my fiancée Kelly in the US last
year and got the opportunity to ride in her co-worker Caleb’s jeep with the
roof or doors on, although I was riding through residential housing in Madison,
Wisconsin, in my heart I was in the back of a jeep on a mission with “The
A-Team”. I know Neil would probably love to meet Ralph Macchio and I would love
to meet Dirk Benedict. (Bradley Cooper too, but only because of his part on “Alias”
not “The A-Team” or “The Hangover”)

Maybe we give
remakes too hard a job. They’re never going to win. Because in reality they’re
not just going up against the old movie but for the geek nation, our childhood
imagination, and I’m honestly not sure that can ever be beaten.

So until my next
blog… “I love it when a plan comes together”, “Wax on, Wax off” and if you want
to be a true hero never “Sweep the leg!”.

Thursday, 13 March 2014

At this juncture, however, I feel it is necessary to put a
little disclaimer in my work. That is to say that this blog isn’t meant to
offend anyone or make myself sound anymore patronising or pompous than I can do
in the flesh. It is just me trying to complain about things over which I have
zero control, so if anyone has a problem with anything I say, please contact me
and let me know and I’ll see if I can accommodate you.

Anyway, on with the subject of today’s post. And that is a
subject that stands above all other geek subjects. It rises like Godzilla out
of Tokyo Harbour (not that it actually is Godzilla) and beats all into
submission. It is the subject that all geeks have opinion about. Even if said
opinion is dismissive and derisory. And that subject is “Star Trek”.

No television series polarises people’s opinion quite like it.
For the totally non geeky, it is that symbol of the geeks complete loss to the
rest of the human race. They look at you as you say you like it, with the exact
same look on their face as Diane Keaton has in the last scene of “The Godfather”.
As Pacino is lost to the mob, we are forever lost to the forces of geekdom, at
least in their minds.

And then there are the people who like sci-fi but don’t want
anybody to know it. “I only like Star Wars” they say “I’ve never watched Star
Trek”. As if watching sci-fi was a crime akin to taking a controlled substance
and saying “I only like Star Wars” is like smoking one cannabis joint in
college whereas watching “Star Trek” is like snorting cocaine while tweaking
crystal meth. So long as you’re not a “Star Trek” fan, you’re not completely
gone.

There are the hardcore fans of course, those who’ve watched
every episode, have every Star Trek novel ever published, they have their own
uniform and a character profile they’ve created to go with it. I can’t keep up
with all that. It’s too much effort but I have a lot of respect to anyone who
does. To you I say “Qapla!”

I just like watching it. I have some on dvd. I enjoy it and will
happily converse with you for hours over the merits of DS9 versus Voyager, Kirk
versus Picard, Spock versus Tuvok (as the best Vulcan, I know it seems
ridiculous to suggest anyone comes close to Spock but it’s a close run thing
for me).

Despite all that I’m only a passing fan. I enjoy it, well enough
but that’s it. When I was in school, a group of guys would watch every episode
religiously, (this was “Star Trek : Deep Space Nine” which conveniently finished
the year we left school for college) they talked about it, debated it and one
even used it for an English speaking and listening presentation.

It is very clear to me that I’m not a Star Trek geek, just a
fan. (I’m also rubbish at making a presentation. Back in school when asked to
give constructive criticism of others pieces I went slightly overboard while
never working on my own. I thought I could wing it. Needless to say it was a
verbal bloodbath when my turn came around. Ah! The patronising arrogance of the
geek! Everyone in that English class knows I deserved the response I got and so
do I) But there is lots in “Star Trek” for the passing fan. So for anyone
wishing to dip their figurative toes in the Trek pool here are my (humbly
offered, lest a repeat of Year 11 English Class of ’99) top tips.

1. Start with “The Original Series” or “The Next Generation”,
They’re the least geeky (although my friend Danny loves “Voyager” and he’s
about as ungeeky as they come)

2. There’s going to be a lot of rubber foreheads. As a general
rule whenever “Star Trek” wants to make an alien, it sticks moulded rubber on a
human head, you can’t cope with that, give up now.

3. It will not make sense. It is highly illogical.

4. The new films are great but check out the series.

5. The Captain WILL fall in love. REPEATEDLY. Deal with it.

6. The Vulcans WILL fall in love. REPEATEDLY (Even though Pon
Farr, the Vulcan mating cycle happens only once every seven years and they’re
supposed to have controlled emotions)

7. All the computers WILL sound the same. And they will get
trapped on the Holodeck again and again.

If you can cope with these things then sign up for Starfleet and
watch some classic ‘Trek if not then there’s always some girl on “Maury” who’s
about to have a paternity test on her baby for the 15th time. No
doubt she’ll run backstage in a totally unscripted act when she finds out that
it’s not his. Peace out and Live Long and Prosper!

Wednesday, 12 March 2014

There is a moment that every geek knows. That moment, when,
while you’re deeply engrossed in a major plot point of a “DR Who” episode you’ve
watched three times already, somebody interrupts and suggests that some
storyline point of that or whatever tv show/comic book/movie you were watching
the day before yesterday is mildly unbelievable. “Really?” I hear myself reply “And
there was me naively watching it for its factual basis.”

I’m being facetious of course, but it does display a peculiar
prejudice to which the non-geeks amongst us often fall into. That their
interests are somehow much more realistic, and therefore more mature, than ours
are. Soap fans are the worst for this, ridiculing sci-fi fans for watching
unrealistic television while they watch equally unrealistic programmes simply
dressed up in the gritty realistic clothes of “real life”.

There they are, ridiculing us for the likelihood of Captain
James T. Kirk falling in love with everyone he meets while accepting total
ridiculousness as down to earth realism. Even when such realism includes Rita, from British soap opera “Coronation Street”, having a breakdown, losing her memory and then being
chased by her murderous ex-boyfriend Alan Bradley across tram tracks in
Blackpool just so you can end the episode with Bradley getting run over by a
tram. A tram! Now that is unrealistic.

“Who shot J.R.?”, “Free the Weatherfield One”, (any non- British
people reading, don’t ask about this last one, you’re better not knowing) the
entire series of “Eldorado” in Britain and “Dynasty” in America. These are
unrealistic events. But just because there are no phasers, transporters,
superheroes, temporal paradoxes, TARDISes or falling in love with alien
princesses (although I’m not sure “Dynasty” didn’t try the last of these), then
you can judge us.

Trust me, you can’t. The reason why not? Jason Donovan’s “Neighbours”
era mullet. Honestly, any genre of television loses its credibility when one of
its young romantic leads looks like he has a meerkat stuck to his head. (For
all non-Brits and non-Aussies, check this monstrosity out on google images, it
gave me childhood nightmares)

Another reason? “The Flying Doctors”. More Australian soap opera
mullets only now they’re flying to get you.

It would be wrong to say that I hate soaps. I can quite happily
watch them for a long time. I know “Who shot J.R.” and I actually remember when
Alan Dale’s character died in “Neighbours” from a heart attack. (Interestingly
enough, Dale’s characters in “Ugly Betty” and “The O.C.” both died of heart
attacks too. Although in “ER” he only got paralysed from the waist down) I
quite like soaps. I just don’t think they’re more realistic.

And, I would argue, that is what makes our geekery so enticing.
Its lack of reality. It is unreal. It is that it takes us away from ourselves.
To other galaxies and worlds, to revel in tales of derring do, of heroes and villains.
This is why geeks exist. Its why, even when they find out its all fake, WWE
fans still love to watch wrestling, the knowledge that it’s a story somehow
makes it better. Rather something uplifting like that than watching some fight
over who’s sleeping with who on a soap opera.

So next time, somebody ridicules your choice of geekdom, think “Jason
Donovan’s Mullet” or “Joan Collins Shoulderpads” and at least it will make you
laugh as you wonder whether the “Galactica” would be quicker than the “Enterprise”
and just how do the three seashells work in “Demolition Man”.

Saturday, 8 March 2014

In the 21st century world of the internet, geeks, and their
wannabe pretenders, thrive. We discuss and argue, disseminate ideas and
opinions at an extreme rate. We have found a new and fertile breeding ground for
our supercilious proclamations of mastery over our particular subject matter.
Geekdom it seems now lies in how often you can make an appeal for this series
to return on a production company’s facebook or how many times you can get
pictures of yourself in cosplay, for some ridiculous anime series that nobody
has never heard of, onto instagram.

It has to be noticed, now it seems, it has to be seen. No longer
is the geek content with just having a pair of Superman boxers which he keeps
hidden under his jeans, oh no, now everything he wears has to be authentic,
in-universe, from the series official collection and if it’s vintage then “Huzzah”
all the better. (It should be noticed at this juncture, that saying “Huzzah”
rather than “Great” or “Cool” does not make you sound daring in a Victorian
adventurer kind of way, it just makes you sound foolish)

It’s the same way in which every teenage girl seems to have a
copy of the same Ramones t-shirt, they’re all punks! Joey Ramone would be
proud! Only they’re not, they’re just following a bandwagon (with the exception
of one girl I know of who’s liked the Ramones since she was six). They’ve never
heard “Blitzkrieg Bop” in their life. My friend, Gary and I, once made an
agreement that if you wore a band t-shirt, then you had to know at least an
album’s worth of their songs before you could wear it. If only the new
generation of so called geeks felt the same.

It’s fashionable to be a geek! It’s all the rage to be a geek!
Join the geek takeover! Only it’s not really geekery. It’s just trendy, like
wine bars and mineral water and Del Boy’s Filofax in the late eighties, it’s
in! (for any non-British readers of this blog, Del Boy Trotter is a character
in the fantastic and classic UK sitcom “Only Fools and Horses”,its well worth a
watch if you get the chance)

This new geekdom is low effort, low maintenance and best of all
will lead to absolutely no loss of social status. Which is exactly why it’s not
really geekdom, Its like a hundred metre sprint that doesn’t require any
sprinting. You just turn up and wear the kit.

Now the real geek, on the other hand, spends years developing
their geekiness. They hide themselves away watching entire tv series in a day.
They sat through all four seasons Wil Wheaton was on “Star Trek :The Next
Generation” and wouldn’t dare to say “Wheaton”, with the people who think they’re
geeks because they watch “Big Bang Theory”, because they actually remember what
an annoying character Wesley Crusher truly was. They read the books that science
fiction series are based on then they watch the series. They call “cosplay”, “fancy
dress” because they know that calling it something new won’t make it cool and
what geek ever wanted to be cool anyway.

The real geek understands that we do it all for the love of it.
Not to be noticed. We did it only to see a bunch of people jump on bandwagons,
left, right and centre. When Peter Capaldi was announced as the latest Dr Who,
a female fan went on twitter and complained about the fact that “Dr Who should
be fit” and I thought back to my teenage self, saving my money hard for vhs
tapes of a series that wasn’t even on television anymore at that point, and I
realised how much being a geek means nothing anymore. There have been 12 actors
(if you count John Hurt’s War Doctor) who have portrayed Dr Who on T.V. and
Capaldi will be the 13th and with the exception of the last two,
none have been considered fit. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe geeks are now
young trendy people with vintage moustaches and steam punk anime cosplay not
working stiffs like me. Oh well, I better go watch that season of “Babylon 5” I’ve
been meaning to watch all week.

Friday, 7 March 2014

I’m a geek.
Ask my beautiful and funny fiancée. I’m a definite geek. She is as well, in her
own way, of course. However, her geekiness is more normal, extending to getting
excited when she finds that chain coffee shops in the UK serve flat whites and
enjoying blues tracks that I don’t always get around to listening. And she’s
American, which means her geekiness fits in more with the altogether less
reserved personality of Americans.

I’m British,
of course, and therefore subject to the reserved rules of my race. Also being
from the north of England, I am expected to subsist on a diet of football, fry
ups, Friday night booze ups and stories about my time with women of a graphic
nature. I am using stereotypes of course, but on the whole, my geekiness
doesn’t fit in that much and is altogether less acceptable than my unbelievably
better half’s slight coffee obsession.

I am a sci
fi geek. I’m also an old tv series geek. I get excited when I see actors names
in credits on modern shows and can tell you that they were on this show for 5
years in 1984 when I was 1. The average person of my age sees the actress Teri
Garr on a tv show and would recognise her as Phobe’s mother from “Friends”.
Myself on the other hand, I think immediately of the “Star Trek” episode
“Assignment Earth” where she played Roberta Lincoln and “Tootsie” where she
played Dustin Hoffman’s character’s female best friend. I can accept that not
everybody is freaky like this. I know it is slightly disturbing that I can
remember actor’s careers like a stalker but that’s fine. I understand. I’m
strange. I’ve learned to deal with it. But then things changed. In seven simple
words.

It became cool
to be a geek.

The worst
thing that could have happened, you see, when I was a teenager, being a geek
was deeply uncool and required effort. It was like athletics, training yourself
to be a true geek. Now it’s easy. You just say it. “I’m a geek” and there you
are, you’re a geek. Now, I hear you cry,
“You started this blog by saying that you’re a geek, how are you any
different”, I’m very glad you asked, dear reader.

I’m a geek
because other people say I am and when in a conversation about geeky things I
know what I’m talking about. I also don’t claim to be geeks of things I’m not.
I’m not a Lord of the Rings geek (notice I don’t abbreviate the name in that oh
so trendy way to LOTR, I refuse, it’s a book series title, you don’t shorten “Great
Expectations” to “GE”), although I had read “The Hobbit” and “ The Lord of the
Rings” by the time I was twelve and have watched all the films, I had real
difficulty with “The Silmarillion” and thought “The Children of Hurin” was
altogether too dark in a lot of places. I also haven’t learnt to speak Elvish,
a lot of respect to those who have though. You guys are the true “The Lord of
the Rings” geeks.

I’m not a
“The Lord of the Rings” geek and just to reiterate owning the boxset limited
edition dvd collection of the movies wrapped in mithril silver with a copy of
one of the Elven rings from the movie and whatever else you get with it doesn’t
mean anything unless you’ve read the books. Don’t say you’re a “The Lord of the
Rings” geek and then say “I don’t like reading”. Oh, you don’t like reading? It’s an epic book
series, “dude”, it has been for sixty years. It was written by an Oxford
professor of “Anglo Saxon”, it has exhaustive appendixes. It has invented
languages. It is a whole body of work, not just some films from the turn of the
millennium. If you want to be a geek of
a movie series go watch “Star Wars” for goodness sake.

I wouldn’t
say I’m a Star Trek geek either, I mean, I love all the series, but I just
haven’t gone into it to the level some people have. Buying or making their own
costumes, buying every episode on dvd and then rebuying them when it comes out
on blu-ray, although for the record, Picard is definitely a better captain of a
starship and Kirk is just psychedelic sixties fun.

I’m not a
comic book geek either. I’ve got my fair share of graphic novels and collected
titles but I’ve never been able to keep up with the endless different titles.
However it gets hard not to put down so called “comic book geeks” when they
tell me they don’t like “The Amazing Spiderman” because it departs from the
comic by having Spiderman invent his webbing rather than it come out of his
arms biologically. Unbelievable, that’s not the comic. Sam Raimi came up with
webbing out of the arms for the first movie, you obviously haven’t read the comics.

Anyway. This
blog is about a look into the geek world. Well, my version of it, at least. And
I’m sorry if all that earlier seemed slightly petty and teenage but I am a geek
after all. So on these pages. I will talk about tv series and sci fi and give my
opinion of them. You can read if you want and comment if you’d like. But I’m
writing this to rant a little bit if that’s all the same with you. I won’t be
going near music, by the way, because I have friends who are a lot better than
that and if you want to be berated for liking Kasabian then I can put you in
touch with them.